12/10/2020
Welcome to Day 1 of the Mindfulness Challenge!
Our prompt for the day focuses on an important aspect of mindfulness: non-judging.
Every single day, we judge ourselves and others whether we realize it or not. We judge people for having different beliefs from us, we judge people for what they wear, and we judge people because for some reason they can’t seem to respond to our emails (we’ve all been there, right?).
We also judge ourselves when we look in the mirror, when we forget a task that our boss asked us to do, and when we feel like we don’t have our lives together.
The problem with all of this judging is that we start to create beliefs that guide our actions. If you judge someone for their behavior and jump to the conclusion that they are a terrible person, you are setting yourself up to ALWAYS think that, regardless of whether it’s actually true.
The non-judging attitude of mindfulness encourages us to have compassion towards others and ourselves. When we release judgment, we become okay with whatever shows up. We no longer feel the need to fix anything or anyone, and we are able to offer empathy, compassion, and gentleness to others. We are able to connect more deeply with ourselves and others when we expand our knowledge and awareness of the different ways in which people act and think.
Your Mindfulness Challenge today is to be mindful of the moments when you jump to conclusions based on your judgments. What do you judge others for? What do you judge yourself for? Where does that judgment come from?
You don’t have to feel bad for making these judgments. Today’s task is simply about bringing awareness to these judgments and asking about them with a curious mind.
Easy, right?